


They’ll Be “Happy” To Know...

by josephina_x



Series: Dimension 46'\-C [4]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen, Memory Loss, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon, Stress, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 22:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13580316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: Stanley is not very happy with Stanford. Ford gets filled in a bit on those three hours that he missed.Ford isn’t very happy with Stanley, either. But this was something he needed to know.





	They’ll Be “Happy” To Know...

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: They’ll Be “Happy” To Know...  
> Fandom: Gravity Falls  
> Pairing: n/a  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through the end of the series, and some of the books (Journal #3)  
> Summary: Stanley is not very happy with Stanford. Ford gets filled in a bit on those three hours that he missed. 
> 
> Ford isn’t very happy with Stanley, either. But this was something he needed to know.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.  
> AN: Imma putting Ford through the mental and emotional wringer, here, and I haven’t even gotten to the really bad stuff yet… Whoops?

\---

By the time Stanley was back from, presumably, _tucking Bill back in_ , Stanford was sitting at the kitchen table, opposite from where Cipher had been sitting before, with a coffee cup of his own in his hands.

He was feeling like dirt.

He was also holding back a snarl at the thought of Bill having somehow manipulated his brother into _taking Bill’s side_.

Stanley didn’t say anything to him when he walked in.

He didn’t say anything as he opened the cabinet and got himself a new coffee mug. He didn’t say anything as he closed the cabinet door and set the mug down on the countertop.

He didn’t say anything as he poured himself a new cup of coffee, and he didn’t say anything as he picked up that cup and set himself down in the seat where Bill Cipher had been sitting, directly across the table from Ford, in what felt to Ford like a very antagonistic manner.

Ford _knew_ he was doing it _deliberately_.

Ford clenched his hands around his coffee mug. He refused to be the one to break first.

“So,” Stanley said, raising his coffee mug, completely ignoring the tension in the room, as if the silence hadn’t been a battle all its own. “You know what you did wrong?”

“--I’m not a _child_ , Stanley!” Ford shot back at him, hotly, offended at the very implication.

“That’s a ‘no’, then,” Stanley said easily, taking a sip of coffee.

Ford tried very, very hard not to stand up and sock his brother right in the face.

He clenched and unclenched his hands around his mug, and ground his teeth, but he succeeded. Barely.

\--He still _really_ wanted to punch him, though.

Stanley lowered his mug to the table, and left it there. He crossed his arms and sat back in his chair.

“You want me to tell you about those three hours that you missed?” he asked Ford calmly.

Ford pulled in a breath through his nose and let it out again the same way.

“Yes, please,” he told his brother in flat tones, biting off his words while barely hanging onto his temper. “That would be helpful.”

Stanley nodded once.

“The first hour,” Stanley began, “Was pretty... interesting.”

Ford snorted. “I’m sure.”

He shut up when Stanley shot him a look for interrupting.

“Bill didn’t realize he was acting like me, at first,” Stanley told him.

Ford stared.

“He was switching back-and-forth like a lightswitch,” Stanley told him. “He couldn’t tell the difference.” He sighed and scratched at the side of his cheek. “He didn’t understand what he was doing wrong. One second, he’s all grumpy-growly, and the kids are tossing glances and each other and looking at him with skeptical smiles, and the next he’s all high-pitched and manic grins and the kids are looking a little freaked out.”

“You-- you _let him near_ the _niblings?_ ” Ford said, slamming his hands into the table surface and pushing himself to his feet in a full-blown panic.

Stanley let out a laugh. “You kidding me?” he said. “The kids were the ones afraid to leave me alone with _him_ ,” he told him.

“Stanley--”

“Mabel was armed,” Stanley told him. “Grappling hook.” He glanced down at his coffee mug. “Dipper probably could’ve kneecapped him with his journal and then smacked him in the head with it; he was eyeing him like that.”

Ford let out a cough.

He felt a bit of warmth in his chest, proud of the niblings for their bravery, but…

“The kids are alright?” Ford asked, for confirmation.

Stanley nodded without reservation or hesitation.

Ford slowly sat down again.

Stanley rubbed his fingers against his forehead. “Bill shuffled into the kitchen with a slouch, fumbling for the coffeemaker, just like I always do every morning, ‘cept it was him, and the afternoon, and he was sorta stumbling a bit.” Stanley glanced away and let out a huff of breath. “Dipper wasn’t looking at him straight-on. Doodling in that journal of his. He actually started with a ‘geez, Grunkle Stan…’ before he realized that I was still sitting there right next to him when I said, ‘yeah?’” Stanley chuckled. “Should’a seen the look on the kid’s face when he glanced up at me, and then looked over and saw _Bill_.”

Ford frowned at the levity. It wasn’t funny. “...And Mabel?”

“Just stared,” said Stanley. “Kid’s smart. Think she might’ve caught on before I did, heh,” Stanley said with a pained smile, that faded away. “The triangle looked up when Dipper talked. Frowned when Dipper freaked, all flailing and panicked. Then Bill sorta… looked down at himself and... blinked a couple times. Lifted his hands up. Looked at them.” Stanley shrugged. “Maybe he thought he was me for a second there, maybe he didn’t? Took him a moment, whatever it was. The he straightened up a bit, sorta swayed a little. Sorta like he was figuring out the body he was in?” Stanley shook his head. “Then he looked up all big-smiles and bright-eyes and said, ‘Hey, Pine Tree! Didja _miss_ me?’”

Ford swallowed hard at Stanley’s near-perfect rendition of Bill’s voice. The cadence was exactly _Bill_. If it wasn't for his brother’s lower, gravelly pitch…

“Dipper fell outta his chair when Bill started walking towards him,” Stanley told him. “Bill stopped moving and went sorta expressionless when he saw Dipper get up, grab his journal, and scramble behind my chair. Sorta stared at us both.” Stanley seemed to mull over this a little. “Not sure what he was thinking then. But he was looking at the three of us for a second or so, just sort of staring at us with his arms dangling down all loose at his sides, kinda hunched forward, and then he just… changed,” Stan told him. “Shifted his posture and frowned and said, ‘You okay, kid?’”

Ford blinked. He’d expected… well, not _that_.

“He sounded like you?” Ford asked.

“Just about,” Stanley confirmed. “Voice was lower than what he’d said at first, a lot closer to mine,” Stanley told him. “But he went from lookin’ all alien-puppeting-around-a-human-body to just human, like _that_ ,” Stanley snapped his fingers together. “Got our attention, all right.”

Ford felt… uneasy was really the only way to describe it.

“Happened like that a couple times,” Stanley told him. “The triangle isn't dumb. He tried moving forward again, then stopped and moved back over to the fridge when Dipper shied away from him again. He stayed standing where he was after that, while the kids talked at him, and he talked back,” Stanley told him. “He could tell when they were getting freaked out and when they weren’t, even if he didn’t know why at first. He didn’t like it when they were getting freaked out -- and he was one confused cookie, lemme tell ya -- but he was trying so hard,” Stanley sighed. “He _wanted_ to have ‘em happy with him.” Stanley grimaced. “It was like watching a _dog_ get trained,” Stanley told him in wincing, descending tones, “almost painful to see. Took the kids maybe ten minutes to do it.”

“...Do _what?_ ” Ford asked him.

“Get him acting consistently like _me_ instead of him,” Stanley told him, with a grim face.

“What?” Ford said. “That’s--” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“The triangle learns quick,” Stan told him, taking another sip from his coffee mug.

Ford was so flabbergasted, it took him a moment to realize what his brother was actually trying to tell him.

“Stanley, that makes _no sense_ ,” he told his brother. “Bill doesn’t care what the kids think of him.”

“No,” Stanley agreed, “But I do.”

Stanford stared at him. It didn’t take long for the implications of that statement to really set in.

And then Ford got a very, very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Stanley…” he began, with no small dread.

“Bill started pausing a bit before acting like himself, after that,” Stanley continued on. “He knew that he wasn’t getting it right, but he wasn’t really sure what else to do. The pauses got longer. He looked really frustrated, too.” Stanley gave him a rueful sort of smile. “I figured that one out before the kids did. I started asking him what he thought of things I already had an opinion on, and then things I hadn’t really thought about before. Anything I’d done or talked about before, he acted like me. Everything else…” Stanley shrugged. “Didn’t take him much longer to go from remembering me, to remembering how to _think_ like me, once the kids got in on it, kinda poking at him with words. ‘Nother twenty, thirty minutes?”

“Stanley--”

“Once he’d sort of figured things out, got straight what was which? Bill started to relax,” Stanley told him, “Leaned back up against the fridge, just talking. Then Mabel called him ‘Grunkle Bill’ and…” He rubbed the back of his neck.

“It didn’t go over well,” Ford said, remembering what they’d both said earlier.

“Dipper was shocked, thought Mabel was crazy,” Stanley told him. “I didn’t really know what to think. But Bill lit up like… well, like I sorta _felt_ the first time Mabel started using that smushword on me last summer, like I’d asked them to. ...At least, he did for about a second or two, anyway. Triangle’s got no real filter right now, Ford,” Stanley told him. “Not sure he’s even trying to, most of the time. Pretty much everything shows up in his expression. He lit up when he remembered what being a ‘grunkle’ is supposed to mean, and then he must’ve remembered all the things he’d done to the kids that were pretty much the opposite,” Stanley told him, “Because his face sorta fell a little and then he started to look a little scared.”

“Scared?” Ford couldn’t comprehend Bill ever showing fear. He hadn’t yet managed to wrap his head around the idea of Bill having begged Stanley for mercy right before Stan had punched him out of existence inside his own mind… except _not_ , because it didn’t take. “Scared of what?”

“Of hurting the kids again, Ford!” Stanley said, sounding like he was annoyed to have to… repeat it? Ford remembered that, yes, Bill had alluded to such worries earlier, but Bill hadn’t truly _meant_ it, surely…? “He doesn’t want to hurt them, because _I_ don’t want to hurt them. He tried to cover it up,” Stanley told him, “That fear. He slapped on a fake grin way too late to cover anything and tried to laugh Mabel off, but I saw the look she gave him. Pretty sure she’s got his number now.” Ford winced. He knew how stubborn she could be, and how determined she was to think the best of people; it wasn’t going to be easy to convince her of Bill’s deceit before she got hurt. “And the triangle started getting twitchy about it all, after, the more decent Mabel was to him, and the less suspicious Dipper got.”

“That’s dangerous, Stanley,” Ford said.

“I know that, Ford, I’m not an idiot,” Stanley told him. “And neither is Bill. He knows it, too. Who do you think was the one pushing the hardest for the kids to not be in the Shack this summer?” Stanley cut Ford off before he could respond. “--It was Bill, Ford. Bill wanted the kids someplace safe, away from him.” Stanley swirled the coffee in his mug, sighing. “I think he’d do better with more time around them, but…”

“You can’t be serious,” Ford said, aghast.

“Less than an hour, Ford, and they practically had him eating out of their hands,” Stanley told him.

“It won’t last,” Ford said. “If it’s even real in the first place.”

Stanley eyed him. “The triangle ever seem like a good actor to you? ‘Cause he came across as a way too impatient jerk to me.” Stanley made a face. “Though I guess I only really saw him for, what, a couple minutes during the whole..." Stanley waved his hand around a little.

Ford struggled with the thought, then let out a sigh. “No, he’s not that good an actor, to fake liking the kids, if that’s really what happened and you weren’t just seeing things,” he allowed.

“Oh, I was seeing things, alright,” Stanley told him. “It just wasn’t anything I was expecting to see.”

Ford pinched the bridge of his nose under his glasses.

“Stanley, that doesn’t mesh with what he said earlier, though, about hurting Mabel,” he told his brother, getting a headache.

Stanley frowned at him. “What?”

“Bill said he couldn’t think of a single reason not to hurt her, remember?”

Stanley gave him a look.

“Ford, that’s not what the triangle said,” Stanley told him. “Bill said that he couldn’t remember a single reason _of his own_ why he shouldn’t kill her.” He eyed Ford. “You know, _triangle_ -him. He didn’t say that he didn’t have any reasons rattling around in his brain someplace; _I_ can think of plenty of reasons why not.”

Ford frowned at the wordplay.

“Ford,” Stanley set his coffee mug down. “He’s not worried about not having a reason not to. What he’s worried about is that, sooner or later, he’s gonna get mad at her over something, and the trillion years of memories of being triangle-him is gonna drown out the fifty-odd years of human _me_ long enough that he won’t be able to think of why he shouldn’t hurt her _quickly_ enough to stop himself before he _does_ hurt her.”

Ford frowned, because there was one rather large gaping hole in that argument, there. “Stanley, if he really cared about them enough, he’d--”

“--let us lock him up and throw away the key?” Stanley asked. “Yeah, no. I vetoed that one.”

“What?” Ford said, startled.

“McGucket came upstairs with a set of cuffs made outta scrap, a little into hour two,” Stanley told him. “Bill was gonna try to let him put them on him, but he was fighting himself real _hard_ to do it, I could see it,” Stanley told him. “The triangle was startin’ to bleed through again. --Not that I blame him,” Stanley said. “Heck, _I’d_ have a hard time putting on handcuffs voluntarily, even if I knew it was to keep the kids safe. And Bill was basically trying to do that while surrounded by a bunch of enemies who had a lot of reasons to want to hurt him,” Stanley sighed, “from the triangle’s point of view, anyway. So I said no.”

“I can’t believe you did that,” Ford said, feeling utterly disturbed.

“Yeah?” Stanley said. “Well, him tryin’ to stay still while McGucket put those things on him was doing the exact opposite to him of what the kids had just got done doing talking to him for that whole first hour,” Stanley told him. “I wasn’t about to mess that up.”

Ford shook his head in disbelief at Stanley’s actions, or rather lack thereof. “Where are the cuffs now?”

“I had Fiddlenerd take them with him when he went back to the mansion, along with the kids,” Stanley told him. “I know how I’d feel with a threat like that hangin’ over my head. Better that they’ve got them, anyway. Just in case.”

Ford rubbed at his eyes.

“You really don’t trust me when I say I know what I’m doin’, do you,” Stanley said, sounding very down about it, and maybe a little frustrated as well.

“It’s not about trusting you, Stanley,” Ford told him. “It’s about _not trusting Bill_.”

“But you don’t think I can handle him,” Stanley said. “Even after everything--”

“--That’s not the point!” Ford snapped.

“I think it kinda is,” Stanley said. “Either you trust me, or you don’t, Ford. Pick one.”

Ford felt agitated enough at this that he couldn’t sit still. He got up from his chair and started pacing.

“Ford…”

“You’re asking me to trust you, that you know what you’re doing when you’re trusting _him!_ ” Ford said. “Do you have _any idea--_ ”

“He hurt you, I get that,” Stanley told him, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table while looking at him. “You’re worried that he’ll hurt you, and the rest of us, again.”

That’s not _all_ he was worried about. “--And you’re not!?”

Stanley sighed.

“You wanna hear about hours two and three?” his brother put out there.

Ford didn’t feel like he could sit down, but he did manage to stand still and stop pacing. “Fine. Yes. Go ahead.”

“Hour two was mostly spent convincing everybody we could to leave the Shack, figuring out logistics and getting everybody packed up and gone,” Stanley told him. “I got Soos and Wendy to watch the triangle for a sec at one point, so I could go and check on you, make sure you were alright, ‘cause I wasn’t exactly sure how he’d gotten past you.”

“...Oh, well, thank you very much for your concern, Stanley,” Ford said with his voice dripping sarcasm, because really, it had taken him an hour to think of him? Of checking up on him?

Stanley gave him a long look. “How many times has anybody other than me been able to walk past you without you waking up, even when you’re dead asleep, since you’ve been back?”

Ford winced and looked away. It was a problem that had had them always choosing the most remote berths at the end of every pier that they’d stopped at. Even someone walking by outside, out on the pier, had woken him up, every time it had happened. And then he’d have a great deal of trouble getting to sleep again. It had caused problems, but some survival instincts just didn’t go away overnight, or even after several months time.

He’d had to learn not to wake up when Stanley was pacing about, or he’d never have gotten any sleep at all, and even that had been hard.

“I’d figured that either you’d let him out of there yourself, or you were already dead and me running out of the kitchen to check up on you would be leaving a homicidal demon alone with the kids,” Stanley continued on practically, and Ford grimaced and looked away.

“I suppose I should thank you for the blanket, then,” Ford said, looking away, because at least one of them knew how to apologize, he figured.

“Wasn’t me,” Stanley told him, and Ford glanced over at him. “I can put blankets on you when I’m half-asleep, and guess who was half-asleep and shuffling around like he was me when he first woke up?”

Ford stared.

“No, that’s not-- _I would have woken up!_ ” Ford said, shocked.

“ _Ford_ ,” Stanley said with no small exasperation, putting his mug down. “Weren’t you listening earlier when we told you he’s been in my head with me for the past nine months? That the two of us were working together, trading off sometimes? That he’d been there _first?_ \--I’m pretty sure that at least half the time I was getting up out of my bunk on the boat, to toss a blanket over you in the middle of the night when you’d fallen asleep at your desk again, it was him doing it, not me.”

“ _ **I would have woken up**_ ,” Ford insisted, more strongly.

“Ford, you learned not to wake up startled when I was doing it _when it was both him and me doing it_ ,” Stanley told him. “You learned not to wake up to **either one of us**.”

Ford shuddered, wrapping his arms around himself.

“He could’ve hurt you and he didn’t,” Stanley said. “Didn’t even occur to him. That’s his new baseline now, Ford. Wanting to take care of you, wanting the kids to like him...”

“No, Stanley--”

“McGucket offered up his mansion to the kids and the others for the duration,” Stanley continued on, “once Dipper brought up setting up another unicorn voodoo barrier. Dipper remembered most of it, but he wasn’t sure about the amounts and stuff, since he’s never helped you make it. _Bill_ remembered the formula, wrote it down,” Stanley told him. “--And yeah, Bill said that you should check it over, make sure he scaled up the amounts correctly, isn’t lying and all that. He knows we’ve got no reason to trust him right now. He’s _real_ aware of that.”

...Yes, and making sure that spell was right was important. It couldn’t wait. Bill could have written down _anything_ , potentially even something _dangerous_ to carry out, with those basic ingredients attached. “I’ll call--” Ford moved towards the phone in the kitchen.

Stanley shoved his hand into a pocket and pulled out a folded-up piece of paper.

He held it out to Ford.

Ford stopped in place, then took it from him and unfolded it.

It was a full sheet of paper. At the top was the ‘original’ recipe and instructions.

“This is exactly what I wrote in my first journal, Stanley,” Ford informed his brother, feeling taken aback, even more so when he remembered that this _wasn’t_ a spell that he’d gotten from Bill. “ _Exactly_ what I wrote. --How did he get his hands on this?” Had Bill done something more in those few weeks before he and Stanley had fought, and he’d gone through the portal, than to keep rebuilding the portal again whenever Ford collapsed in exhaustion due to lack of sleep? He knew that Bill had written things in code into his third journal at times, but _had Bill messed with his first two journals as well?!?_

“Yeah, uh, you know I’ve read all your nerdy books, right?” Stanley told him. “He’s got my memories?”

Ford forced himself to stop and take a deep breath. “... _Right._ Right.” He told himself that what was in the past would have to remain in the past when it came to his journals; his journals were now gone, relegated to the Bottomless Pit and whatever various unknown alternate dimensions they’d been ejected back out into.

Ford grimaced and, once his breathing and blood pressure were back under control, kept reading. Below his original instructions were a few calculations and then a set of extended instructions, which went into _much_ greater detail on how to prepare and apply the concoction than what Ford had originally written down in Journal 1.

It also included a set of entirely new instructions after that, on how to test that the formula had been prepared correctly and set up successfully -- something which Ford had done before himself, but never written anything in his journals about.

Ford frowned slightly as he recognized the handwriting.

“Dipper wrote this?” he said.

“Bill wrote the first one, placed it on the table next to Dipper, told us not to touch it. Dipper copied it over twice,” Stanley said. “Fiddlenerd burned Bill’s copy on the stove with a pair of tongs. Didn’t want to risk metaphysical contamination, or something,” Stanley shrugged.

“Spells of suggestion and compulsion can be etched into paper with ink,” Ford told him, feeling numb. “Delayed activation. You have to be touching the piece of paper the spell was attached to when it activates, though -- contact with the original is required. Copies won’t transmit it.”

“Pretty much what they both said,” Stanley told him.

Ford rubbed his eyes. He was getting a headache.

“He doesn’t want to hurt us,” Stanley said. “He doesn’t want us to think he wants to hurt us.” He paused. “And he doesn’t want to risk that he might just be a mental puppet-front for the triangle, either, not realizing that he’s doing something that’s going to hurt us because the triangle-him snuck it into what he’s doing somehow, without him realizing it.”

Oh, Axolotl. Ford hadn’t even thought of that. It was too twisted. Would Bill even go that far?

...Actually, yes, he probably would, and laugh about it all the while.

“Give me a moment to check this,” Ford said, pulling out the chair next to Stanley and sitting down at the table with it.

After awhile, he had to pull out a pen and paper and make a few notes of his own.

“The triangle leave something out?” Stanley asked him.

Ford shook his head absently. “The theory, not the use,” he told his brother, as he continued his calculations, checking them against what had been written. “Multiple small batches of the entire mixture won’t mesh well together in the application stage; a single very large batch made all at once is less likely to work correctly, as it’s difficult to mix thoroughly and also liable to cool unevenly unless some finicky and difficult-to-pull-off mitigatory measures are taken to prevent it from happening,” he explained. “To really do it right, it’s not a one-to-one scale up; you can’t just multiply the amounts and be done with it.”

Stanley let him work in silence, until he’d finished.

Ford sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.

“What’s the verdict?” Stanley asked him.

“It should work,” Ford told him. “At least, I think so.” It was hard, after so many years, to remember what things Bill had been the one to tell him so very long ago -- that Cipher could have potentially left some piece of very crucial information out of -- and what things he’d learned elsewhere instead, entirely on his own, that could be completely trusted. ...The mystical barrier _had_ worked on Bill, though, both before and during Weirdmageddon.

Ford shook his head. “The instructions to test it are absolutely correct, at least, so even if there is a problem, they should know about it immediately.” Bill had even included instructions for both daily and weekly testing, methods that shouldn’t degrade the barrier. He sighed. “I’m not certain how much help this will be, though, in terms of safety,” Ford told him, dropping his hand to look over at his brother. “He is inside the barrier now.” He could still get to any of them physically, at least, even if the barrier would suppress almost any mystical activity that tried to occur inside of it, that might otherwise end in Stanley being hurt when Bill was injured through their anchor-burn link.

“Uh, yeah,” Stanley said, rubbing the back of his neck. “About that.”

Ford looked over at him.

“I thought you took him back to your bedroom just now,” Ford said. He couldn’t imagine Stanley forcing Bill to sleep out-of-doors after the way his brother had acted earlier.

“I did,” Stanley affirmed. “This was earlier. When we were getting everybody’s things packed and into Soos’ truck.”

Ford frowned at him.

“You _didn’t_ ,” he said, aghast, shoving himself to his feet. “You did _not_ let Bill outside the barrier!”

“Eh,” Stanley shrugged, crossing his arms. “I tried?”

Ford blinked at him owlishly. “‘ _Tried?_ ’”

“Well.” Stanley pulled a slight face. “The triangle was hanging back on the porch while we were carrying stuff out to the truck. I told him to stop lazin’ around and help out. He told me he shouldn’t step outside the barrier, ‘cause he knows plenty of spells, and while he can’t cast ‘em inside the thing, he can probably still cast ‘em outside.”

Ford froze in place for a moment, then yet again berated himself for his own lack of foresight -- of course Bill could use his extensive knowledge to their detriment, even without the majority of his powers, _of course_ he could -- and he worriedly made a mental note to himself, underlined and in bolded red text, to find a way to keep Bill inside the barrier at all times, _post-haste_. Perhaps a shock collar, or some kind of shackle-and-chain arrangement that involved ankles instead of wrists…? Magical energy was a subset of mystical energy; the barrier would suppress it as well, but only if he could keep Bill contained inside the perimeter.

“--I told him to stop makin’ excuses and to get moving. Had to bug him a few times ‘til I pissed him off enough that he did it.” Stanley then gave a nervous cough. “Sorta. He picked up two suitcases off of the porch and walked face-first right into the barrier. The thing went off like a fireworks display, and he went down like he’d walked into a wall. Wasn’t expecting it. Think he almost broke his nose.” Stanley rubbed the back of his neck. “Had to repack that second suitcase,” he huffed out.

Ford stared at him.

“Once his nose stopped bleeding, I tried grabbing his hand and pulling him through. Nothing. My hand went through, his stopped at the fingers, set off a lightshow. Elbows, knees, head, feet -- he just can’t do it. Far as we can tell, either you’ve gotta be the one who does it, or maybe he’s gotta be unconscious while we’re carting him around.”

“He’s stuck in here?” Ford said in rising tones. Because how did that even make any sense at all -- was he just playing with them? And if not, how would he react to such confinement when his reaction to being stuck in Gravity Falls had been to-- ...Then Ford stopped and pinched the bridge of his nose. “--Of course he isn’t stuck in here, he can just rip out a section of unicorn hair to take down the barrier. Foolish of me to even suggest it.”

“You need more sleep,” his brother informed him.

“ _We_ need to start sleeping down in the lab where he can’t get to us,” Ford said. The barrier was spherical, and only went so far.

“ _He_ can get to us just fine if he rips up some of that unicorn hair, remember?”

“I can lock down the elevator,” Ford told him, though that hadn’t been his first thought. He’d just thought ‘basement labs’ - ‘outside the lower curve of the barrier’ - ‘safe’. Clearly he did need additional sleep. “--We’ll take shifts,” he settled on as a compromise, because with enough idle time, Bill could likely find a way around anything that Ford had designed or put together, as much as he didn’t want to admit it. Far better for at least one of them to be watching Bill at all times.

“ _Or_ ,” said Stanley, “We can maybe _not_ leave him alone for long periods of time, with only his own thoughts and memories to keep him company, since a heck of a lot more of those belong to the triangle than to me, and _instead_ stick around to try and keep him from thinking like a triangle-that-maybe-wants-to-kill-us-all in the first place.”

“Stanley--”

“--Y’know what?” Stanley said, “You wanna keep interruptin’? I’m just gonna try to summarize, okay?” he said with no small exasperation. “Hour one: he wakes up, puts a blanket on you ‘cause you needed one, comes out to the kitchen without waking you, and the kids talk him around into acting more like me than the triangle.” Ford began to protest at the abbreviated summary -- he needed _details_ , and if Stanley had said it this way before, he would’ve missed half of what Stanley had been trying to tell him -- but Stanley cut him off. “Hour two: Fiddlenerd comes back upstairs with a pair of cuffs to put on him, and I veto it because doing that starts making him act more like the triangle again; we decide to go with him staying here where we can keep an eye on him, and evacuating almost everybody else to Abuelita’s old place instead. We get everybody packed, find out he can’t get past the barrier, and then Dipper is able to convince Fiddlenerd to let everybody stay with him instead, because apparently the only reason Fiddlenerd didn’t offer to do it in the first place was because he didn’t want to risk the triangle coming up there to the mansion, ‘cause his son’s living up there with him right now. But with a barrier around the mansion, everybody’ll be just fine and Fiddlenerd won’t start doing any stress-tinkering or whatnot. So. They ended up going there instead.”

Ford blinked. He… hadn’t really thought of that. That Fidds might want to stay out of the fight, on account of being worried about his son’s safety.

“Hour three,” Stanley continued. “Everybody’s left for the mansion to help with the relocation-move except you, me, and the triangle, and you were still asleep. So me and the triangle sat down and started talking about a bunch of stuff that we hadn’t felt so comfortable talking about in front of the kids.”

“Like your memories,” Ford said, looking away. “And the boat.”

“Yeah,” Stanley said. “And some other stuff, like Weirdmageddon, from his point of view.” Ford snorted, but then twisted his head around to stare at his brother, when Stanley picked up his mug again and said over the rim, “--And you.”

Ford watched, as Stanley took a sip from his mug almost nonchalantly.

“And I thought Gideon was grade-A prime stalker material,” Stanley snorted. “But he’s got _nothing_ on the triangle, with how he’s all ‘Ford’-this and ‘Ford’-that,” Stanley continued, leaning back in his chair, looking at Ford. “Funny thing, though,” he added, looking Ford straight in the eye as he cradled his mug in his hands. “For some reason, he thinks you two are friends.”

“We aren’t,” Ford said evenly.

“Uh huh,” said Stanley, his gaze getting a little more intense. “...Then maybe you can explain to me why, when I asked him why he thought that, he told me--”

Oh, no.

“--that you had _told_ him that you were friends. That you wanted to be.”

Ford tried not to cringe. He succeeded. Barely.

“That you’d **shook hands** on it,” Stanley added, in a tone of voice that meant that he _knew_ that it had been the metaphysical equivalent of a deal, and Ford set his jaw.

“Bill was never my friend!” Ford objected.

Stanley gave him a long look over the rim of his mug.

“ _We aren’t friends anymore_ ,” Ford said tightly. “Obviously.”

“Yeahhhh,” Stanley said, looking down at his mug. “You might want to tell him that. ...And maybe take some time to think good, long, and hard about whether you _really_ want to do that, first.”

Ford stared at his brother aghast. Then his eyes narrowed.

“Stanley, what on earth could _possibly_ make me want to ever try and be friends with him, again?!” he told his brother coldly. “--We weren’t even friends in the first place!” he added, building up steam. “Bill was just _using_ me to--”

“--Not from his point of view,” Stanley said, and it felt like a sucker punch to the gut.

“...What?” Ford all but wheezed out. He shook his head. “Stanley, you _can’t_ be serious.” Then it occurred to him in a flash. “He’s _lying_ about--”

“Y’know,” Stanley cut in, “when he was tryin’ to explain stuff to me about you and everything else during hour three, he kept makin’ these weird faces?” He set down his mug. “‘Cause there was a lot of stuff that triangle-him had thought he was getting right, that my thoughts were telling him were just completely off and wrong? That he didn’t get before?” Stanley huffed out a breath, and rubbed a hand over his face. “The more he thought about stuff… he got confused about some of the things you did sometimes.” Stanley shook his head. “ _Even more_ confused. Y’know I actually started to try and tell the triangle that you were probably just a bad friend, to try and cover for you?” He looked over at Ford. “He didn’t believe me. Laughed me off.”

“What?” Ford croaked out.

“He laughed me off,” Stanley repeated. “He didn’t believe me. He told me that he thought you were just trying to play by demon rules for him, but maybe you didn’t know them very well. That you were doing it because you’d noticed that he was trying to play by human rules for you, and maybe neither of you were any good at either of them?” Ford was speechless. “Since he knows you’ve only got one life, and you know he can come back from being ‘dead’ and is practically impossible to kill anyway.”

Ford stared at him. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. The only way he could possibly find to interpret that was... 

“...Demon friends try to kill each other on a regular basis?” Ford said slowly.

Stanley shrugged. “It’s kind of like the equivalent of a _really_ bad joke? A prank?” He made a face. “A slap on the back too hard, leaves you choking for breath for awhile?”

Ford stared.

“Apparently most of those hench-demon friends of his started out trying to kill him on-and-off for the first fifty or a hundred years or so, after they all first met,” Stanley told him. “The pink flame-y one still spends a couple hundred years trying to kill him again, every once in awhile -- just for ‘old time’s sake’, because they’re _really_ good friends,” Stanley grimaced.

Ford had no way to respond to this, other than to put his elbows on the table and hold his head in his hands.

“So, yeah,” his brother told him. “Human social conventions.” He heard his brother pause. “Kinda a thing he almost gets now.”

Ford winced.

“...Please don’t tell me that the last thirty years have all been some big misunderstanding, that he’s been mentally stalking me across every dimension I’ve ever been in because he _actually_ thinks we’re still friends,” Ford moaned out. “ _Please_ ,” he all-but-pleaded with his brother, staring down at the tabletop.

“Speaking of misunderstandings… Let’s talk about how the triangle thought Weird-a-ma-whatsit went down -- you know, the _human_ way of doing things, that he was trying to do?” he heard his brother say. “--Leave the old neighborhood, bring all your stuff with you. Yep, did that.” He heard Stanley almost snicker for a moment, or maybe it was a sigh? “Move into a new town, grab some land, build a _really nice_ house? Check. Drop by and introduce yourself to all the new neighbors? Check. Throw a huge housewarming party and invite over all of your friends, _and_ the new neighbors? Check.”

Ford closed his eyes and groaned.

“Get a bunch of dirty cops smashing in the front door because of a noise complaint? Too loud, too rowdy? Get rid of _them_ so that they don’t ruin the good thing you’ve got going on, or the rest of the neighborhood in the process of trying to shut you down. Check.”

Ford shuddered.

“...The Shack-o-tron?” he asked.

“No,” said Stanley.

Ford wondered when that had happened then -- while he’d still been solid gold? -- but then thought on Stanley’s euphemism -- ‘ _get rid of them_ ’ -- and… “I thought you said no-one got killed.”

“No-one from town was killed,” Stanley said. “These guys were from out of town, _way_ out of town. Didn’t get what he was saying at first, but I got the triangle to explain it to me; took awhile, though. --These guys sounded like really bad news, Ford; I wouldn’t want them around. I’m _glad_ he wasted them, and that’s coming from _me_.”

Ford shuddered again. He didn’t know quite what Stanley was referring to there, but he could make an educated guess at the general ballpark. And, given Stanley’s response, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to touch that one with a thirty-foot pole. He’d asked after some stories from Stanley’s ten-year period once… and there was a reason he’d only ever asked the once.

There were reasons why Stanley never used guns, despite owning ten of them.

“Anyway,” said Stanley. “I almost forgot one,” he said, and his brother’s tone of voice had Ford preemptively wincing. “--Find your besty who lives in the same neighborhood, and shanghai his reclusive ass along so he can’t get out of the housewarming party, ‘cause you haven’t gotten to hang out properly in ages? And don’t take ‘no’ for an answer, no matter how much he complains about _not_ wanting to meet or hang out with the rest of your friends? _Check._ ”

Ford dropped his head to the tabletop with a thunk, covered his head with his arms, and _groaned_.

Stanley waited. Ford could just about _feel_ him waiting.

“...That’s not what happened,” Ford muttered out.

“The triangle thinks it is,” Stanley said, taking another sip from his mug. “Even if you and me don’t.”

“You and I,” Ford muttered out, almost on reflex, but his heart really wasn’t in it.

There was a long pause.

Ford slowly turned his head sideways towards his brother.

“It’s fine,” Stanley said. “‘Cause it all worked out, right?” Ford tried not to wince again. “--But hey, he’s got me and all my memories to tell him otherwise about all that stuff, now,” Stanley told him, “So now he’s thinking that _maybe_ he _might’ve_ gone about a _couple_ of those things a _little_ bit the wrong way,” Stanley informed him, with a bit of a grin.

Ford stared.

“...You actually think that he won’t start off a second Weirdmageddon again,” Ford said slowly. The idea was completely insane, to his mind.

“Eh,” Stanley shrugged. “Either he’ll do it, or he won’t. Probably depends on whether he dumps all my memories and goes back to being just a triangle demon, or keeps ‘em and decides to try and ‘integrate’ them, instead.”

“ _What??_ ” Ford said, his head coming up.

Stanley gave him a long look. “Ford,” he said with no small exasperation. “The triangle’s really only got two choices here. Keep ‘em, or don’t.” He frowned at him. “What did you _think_ he meant when he said he had to sort it all out ‘properly’? Right now, he’s just trying to figure out what he thinks ‘properly’ _is_ ,” his brother told him, sitting forward in his chair.

“He hasn’t decided yet?” Ford said, feeling stunned.

“ _No_ ,” said Stanley. “He _hasn’t_! -- _Why do you think I want him to keep talking with the kids more often?!_ ” Stanley said, slamming down his mug. “He doesn’t _want_ to be the triangle when he’s around them!”

“Stanley...” Ford said, starting to feel anxious for reasons he wasn’t quite sure about yet.

“Seriously, Ford, what do you think I’m doing here?” his brother demanded. from him. “--I’m doing **damage control** , okay!?” Stanley barked out at him. “We can’t kill the triangle straight-out, we don’t know how long it’ll take to figure that out -- _if we ever do_ ,” and that had Ford wincing, “-- and I don’t want the kids getting hurt or the sky getting ripped open again!”

“You can’t do this forever,” Ford told him. “You can’t convince him--”

“--If I can get him to keep my memories, maybe I won’t have to!” Stanley told him, “Maybe he’ll do it on his own!” and Ford realized with a chill that went down to his bones that his brother was being completely serious just then.

“...He’s not like that,” Ford said slowly.

“ _Triangle_ -him isn’t like that,” his brother shot back. “And it’s pretty clear from talking with you now that you don’t know _half_ of what’s going on with him, and _don’t care_.” His brother looked angry, then grimaced and rubbed a hand across his face again.

“I…”

“Y’know, I was hoping,” Stanley said, with a hand still over his face, “that maybe I could use you as leverage too. Or, I dunno, an _incentive_ or something. Along with the kids. For good behavior. Another reason for him to not toss all the human-stuff, and _want_ to get along.” Ford stared at him. Stanley dropped his hand, and he looked _tired_. “But that’s obviously not gonna work, now, is it?”

Ford felt his hair practically stand on end. “I’m not going to be a party to--”

“Oh, I know you’re not,” Stanley said. “You made that _real_ clear earlier.”

Ford gritted his teeth. “I’m not some _prize_ \--”

“--You _used_ to be friends,” Stanley interrupted him. “I thought the two of you were having, I don’t know, _communication issues_ or something,” Stanley said, waving a hand around. “--Not like it’s been the first time,” he added, which was a low blow. “Figured you might be happy about it and maybe be able to get along with him again if he didn’t want to go starting the apocalypse anymore, or whatever else was going on with you two.”

When Ford finally got over being speechless in shock, he all-but-yelled back at his brother, almost hysterically, “ _\--It **wasn’t** just **communication issues!**_ ”

“ _I know that now!_ ” Stanley yelled back, shoving himself upright. “All right? _I get that now,_ you made it _really_ clear earlier, you and him getting along is _off the table_ , it’s _out_.”

Ford shivered. “Thank you for recognizing that fact, Stanley,” he said evenly, while wanting to punch his brother in the face. Frankly, he was offended that his brother had ever thought it a viable option in the first place.

“Sure, whatever,” his brother said. “Pack your bags.”

Ford felt like he’d just been sideswiped by a bus. “What?”

“Get up, pack your bags,” Stanley told him. “Go stay at the mansion with the kids and Fiddlenerd.”

Ford felt a chill go down his spine, and then a hot fire slide through his veins.

He stood up. “I’m not going _anywhere_ ,” he told his brother adamantly.

“You can’t get along with the triangle, you make him _act_ more like the triangle, and you’re not gonna stop doing that,” Stanley told him succinctly. “I can’t trust the two of you to be able to be in the same room as each other without you trying to kill him,” Ford winced, “and him going back to acting full-on triangle again. I don’t want you starting off the next armageddon just because you can’t keep your hands off him!” and that had Ford bristling.

“I was _trying to protect you--!_ ” Ford objected, but before he could say anything else, he was cut off by his brother again.

“--Do you even _know_ what you actually did to him, just now?” Stanley asked him.

“I stopped him from hurting you!” Ford said.

Stanley clenched his jaw, and looked like he wanted to hit him.

“Ford,” he said in heavy tones. “What did you think we meant earlier when we said that _my memories are more immediate in his head right now_.”

Ford barely held back a snarl, because he wasn’t stupid. “That he thinks he’s you!” He shook his head. “--That he thinks _like_ you, until he doesn’t, and remembers himself,” he corrected himself. “Even though he isn’t. And we all know he isn’t.”

Stanley gave him a long, hard, flat stare.

“Yeah,” his brother said. “That’s exactly it.” He gave Ford a long, hard stare. “He thinks like me, and reacts like me, _first_. So tell me, _Ford_ ,” he began, “What do you think he thought just happened to him, _from my point of view?_ ”

Ford stopped short. ‘ _What?_ ’ he thought, because where was Stanley going with this?

“It’s actually pretty simple,” Stanley told him, looking him straight in the eye. “His older brother just yelled at him, throttled him, shook him until he rattled, and nearly killed him. --From _his_ point of view, _thinking he’s me_ , right now, his older twin brother has made it _really_ clear that he hates him, and wants him dead.”

Ford stared at him, feeling… he wasn’t sure what. “But he’s not…” ‘ _you._ ’

“I know that. You know that. The triangle he used to be, who only cared about taking over the world, knows that. Guess who didn’t really _get that_ until just now?” Stanley said with a glare.

Ford stared back at him, feeling a little lightheaded.

“He’s me, except not,” Stanley told him. “You _get that_ , right?”

No. Ford wasn’t sure he did. But it seemed to mean something to his brother, and...

“...Stanley?” Ford said quietly.

“Get your bags, and go,” Stanley told him flatly. He turned away. “Go be with the kids. Get some sleep, work on stuff with Fiddlenerd -- the new barrier over there, more stuff for containing the triangle, whatever. _I’ll_ handle this.”

Ford felt cold.

“You can’t just--” Ford said, starting to feel almost desperate as it started to really sink in, and Stanley _wasn’t_ turning around to face him. “You can’t--!”

Stanley sighed heavily, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, Ford,” he said quietly. “I know this is your place. I know that you don’t want to leave. I’m-- I’m not trying to kick you out...” And at that, Ford wanted to scream at him that _that wasn’t it at all!_

But his brother wasn’t done. “But Poindexter, you know this is the only place with a voodoo barrier right now.” Ford saw his shoulders slump. “It’s just until I can figure something out,” Stanley told him. “Something else that will work, maybe some other place I can take ‘im? You and the kids and everybody can be back in the Shack after that. ...Maybe you and Fiddlenerd can figure something out before I do, and be back sooner,” he tossed out there, like it was an olive branch.

Ford swallowed hard.

“I’m not leaving you alone with him,” he said quietly.

“Yes, _you are_ ,” Stanley ground out. He started moving away, walking back towards his bedroom. “Not like it’ll be all that different from the last nine months,” his brother said. “It was just me and him in my head, then, too. All alone with him.” He heard his brother take a breath. “And he helped,” Stanley said as a parting shot, before he rounded the corner to go down the hallway.

Ford watched him go.

And then Ford slumped, hand out to catch himself on the table’s edge.

He didn’t know what to do.

...All he knew was that he couldn’t leave his brother alone with Bill. It was a trick, or a trap of some kind. It _had_ to be.

He closed his eyes and tried not to scream out in frustration.

He almost didn’t manage even that.

\---


End file.
